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The DOJ told the FBI to hold off on Hillary charges — 48 Comments

1. Those making the decision at the time to not charge Hillary in their eyes were doing the right thing. If Hillary had done her part and not been such a sorry candidate she would have won as expected and the what difference would it make. Of course Trump messed all that up and beat Hillary which could never happen but it did.

2. They whole network from Obama on down was crooked. Rotten to the core.

   Still is. Which is most depressing….

   And the odds are, it seems to me, that they’ll get away with their vast and magnificently intricate conspiracy. (I.e., what if there was a conspiracy and no one reported about it….or they refused to read—and/or believe—what WAS reported.)

   Nonetheless, one must never forget the heroes of these 2016 election:
   – Bernie Sanders
   – Anthony Weiner and of course Huma Abedin (behind a “good” man, etc….”)
   – James Comey (in spite of himself—I mean, if Comey’s not a prime example of deus ex machina, then what is?—but don’t tell him, as it just might go to his head….)

   To be sure, none of the above comes even close to the heroics of Hillary Clinton; but they all, as does she, deserve an enormous amount of credit.

   And gratitude.

   Meanwhile, what to do about those crooks who as yet remain unpunished….

3. Unfortunately, it seems that the only people who care about all of this are on the right.

   One problem this country faces is that one of the two political parties is populated with people who are intellectually and emotionally incapable of contriving and abiding by regular procedures. What’s proper procedure is what gets them what they want. What’s bad is what gets them what they don’t want. Open borders, electoral fraud, absurd judicial decrees get them what they want. Competitive elections get them something else. It’s most amazing the fictions street-level Democrats subscribe to (‘scandal-free administration’) and most amazing the moral and intellectual pretentions in which they trade. This will not end well.

4. So, when Comey said, in the summer of 2016, that no prosecutor would take the case, that was literally true. The DOJ had been told not to prosecute.

   Too bad we can’t impeach Loretta Lynch. She’s probably still be AG if Clinton had won.

5. Too bad we can’t impeach Loretta Lynch. She’s probably still be AG if Clinton had won.

   She should be disbarred, along with Eric Holder.

   One thing that might help would be to break up the Department of Justice. It assembles a set of functions that are ordinarily in separate departments at the state and local level. A purge of Obama-era appointees would be most welcome. Breaking up the FBI into an array of successor agencies might help as well.

6. It sounds like the DOJ and FBI were roughly on the same page in regards to gross negligence.

   According to Page, the FBI, including Comey thought “…maybe there’s a potential here for this to be the charge…” Highlight mine. Sounds like they were on the fence.

   So they talk with DOJ. According to Page, DOJ thought a gross negligence charge “was constitutionally vague and not sustainable”.

   The only difference is that DOJ concludes that a maybe means you don’t bring charges, which sounds about right.

7. “Gross negligence” is very clear, and is often charged, for ordinary people violating security statutes. Comey said he was told to find “intent” to damage US security, which is not required by the statute. Clinton’s negligence was gross, intentionally so.

8. And right on cue we have Manju to speak for the DNC: “Nothing to see here, move along, move along. Orange Man Bad.”

9. “It’s most amazing the fictions street-level Democrats subscribe to (‘scandal-free administration’) and most amazing the moral and intellectual pretentions in which they trade.” Art Deco

   Once key aspects of biological and physical reality are rejected, reality’s feedback mechanism is abandoned, allowing any fiction that resonates with what is desired to be true… to be accepted, as true.

10. If the major players here are never charged and prosecuted, and any prosecution is not seen as thorough and legit, I can’t imagine that a lot of people will have very much faith remaining in our justice system, and such destroyed faith and the resultant cynicism has a very corrosive effect on a society.

11. Manju:

    That’s not even up to your usual standards, which is a pretty low bar.

    (1) “Gross negligence” is not a constitutionally vague standard. Any lawyer who says that is either lying or ignorant, and the lawyers of the DOJ are not ignorant. It is applied in cases all the time. It is a typical statutory term.

    (2) Even according to Lisa Page, the FBI was certainly considering that gross negligence might indeed be a proper charge. The DOJ was apparently saying it wasn’t constitutional, which is (a) not what the FBI thought, and (b) completely beyond the scope of anything the DOJ is supposed to do, anyway. Constitutionality of a duly-passed law is the task of the judiciary, something SCOTUS rules on, not the DOJ.

    (3) Lynch, head of the DOJ at the time, is not supposed to tell the FBI what to do—particularly in this case, where she specifically told the public that she would defer to the judgment of the FBI. She’s not supposed to defer to the judgment of the FBI about whether to prosecute, either. The FBI is supposed to be the agency that investigates initially and makes a recommendation to the DOJ about whether there is a case or not in terms of the evidence they’ve uncovered. The DOJ is supposed to decide whether or not to prosecute. The DOJ is not supposed to tell the FBI what to say, and Lynch is either supposed to recuse herself or to make the decision herself whether or not to prosecute, not to defer that decision to the FBI.

    Andrew C. McCarthy on some of these issues, writing in April of 2018, before the Page testimony was made public (and by the way, McCarthy is a good friend of Comey’s, but in this case he could not bring himself to defend the indefensible actions of Comey):

    These columns have repeatedly pointed out that the decision whether to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information was not the FBI’s call. It was up to the Obama Justice Department, which was in the tank for Mrs. Clinton and was taking direction from President Obama. In April 2016, Obama publicly stated that he did not want his party’s inevitable nominee charged with a crime.

    In making that assertion, Obama distorted the Espionage Act, falsely implying that it required proof of intent to harm the United States before someone could be convicted of mishandling classified information. To the contrary, the law holds that a person is guilty (1) if she willfully causes the unauthorized transmission of classified information — meaning if she understands the wrongfulness of the action and intentionally performs it anyway — or (2) if through “gross negligence” she permits the information to be removed from its proper place or to be otherwise mishandled (see Section 793(d), (e), and (f) of Title 18, U.S. Code). The Justice Department adopted Obama’s erroneous intent standard, as, ultimately, did Comey.

    The former director’s statements in the Brett Baier interview firmly establish that the decision not to indict Mrs. Clinton was based on Obama Justice Department standards, not on the terms of the statute.

    For example, when asked why he was confident, long before Clinton was even interviewed, that she would not be charged, Comey said the investigators working the case told him, “Look boss, on the current course and speed, it looks like it’s not gonna get to a place where the prosecutors would bring it.” It was not that the evidence was insufficient under the law; it was that the Justice Department would not indict.

    Baier then played a now-familiar recording of Comey, under questioning by Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), conceding that Clinton had made various false claims about her emails (no emails “marked ‘classified,’” no classified emails sent or stored, all work-related emails returned to the State Department). Baier then asked why, despite this pattern, Comey had made his decision against charges even before Clinton was questioned. While denying that he had made a final decision at that point, he said he had a “general sense” that the evidence was “unlikely to get us to a place where they would prosecute at the Justice Department.”

    Comey is trying to have it both ways: He wants you to accept that he made the decision not to prosecute on his own, out of fear that the Justice Department was tainted by bias in Clinton’s favor. Yet, when dismissing critics’ claims that the proof was more than adequate under the applicable law, he shrugs his shoulders and says, in effect, “What could I do? I was constrained by the Justice Department’s interpretation of the law.” That is, his hand was forced by the same pro-Clinton bias that he was supposedly thwarting.

    This became excruciatingly apparent when Baier pointed out the care Comey took to describe Clinton’s conduct as “extremely careless” rather than “grossly negligent” — the state of mind criminalized by the Espionage Act. Though these terms are substantively indistinguishable, this semantic ploy enabled Comey to obscure the inconvenience that Clinton was guilty under the statute as written. Comey’s retort was telling:

    I was struggling with the fact that we thought it was not mere sloppiness but didn’t rise to the level of criminal misconduct that the Justice Department would prosecute. So, how do you describe that? I probably should have said “really sloppy.” I wanted to be honest and say, “It’s above ‘sloppy.’ It doesn’t add up to what the 1917 statute meant when it said, “‘Grossly negligent’ is a felony.”

    No, to be honest, the FBI just has to describe what she did. If what she did was extremely careless, then that does add up to “grossly negligent” under the 1917 statute — but it is for the Justice Department to connect those legal dots. If Obama’s Justice officials fail to do so, that’s politics, not law enforcement, so why let the non-partisan FBI get dragged into it? It is not the FBI’s job to make pronouncements on the law. It is not the FBI’s burden to pull out the thesaurus and don Mrs. Clinton’s misconduct in just the right lexical finery until it finally fits the Obama Justice Department’s misinterpretation of a clear criminal statute…

    The FBI’s job was to investigate, not to decide whether the evidence was sufficient to support an indictment. If he was worried that Attorney General Loretta Lynch was conflicted, the upright move was to advise her to step aside — and to do it not at the end but at an earlier point, when it might have helped the FBI get out from under the irregular constraints her Justice Department was imposing on investigators. And a prosecutor’s conflict is not a basis for the FBI to appropriate her authority — Lynch had a deputy and other subordinates who could have acted as attorney general if her recusal was warranted.

12. The problem is that a claim that a gross negligence charge “was constitutionally vague and not sustainable” is simply and plainly untrue. How do we know?

    Comey’s own words were that such a [negligence based] charge had only been prosecuted twice before. So it was sustainable twice before, but not sustainable if your last name is Clinton?

    Here’s the other fact. The submarine officer that was convicted of photographing and distributing images of a live sonar screen was going to serve a multi-year sentence, after having plea-bargained his case with an confession of gross negligence. There never was any accusation of intent, since the sonar screen was off when he started photographing, and it popped on by itself unbeknownst to him.

    Admittedly, a court case will differ if the accused does or doesn’t admit to gross negligence. But both instances are cases based on gross negligence. I believe, but don’t know, there are many convictions based on admissions to gross negligence; implying no intent.

13. neo,

    wrt your 6:37

    Manju knows this. But, boy, did he get you to spend time on his post.

14. Richard Aubrey:

    I spend time on it for 2 simple reasons. The first is that I always try not to reject what anyone says out of hand, but to show why I reject it. Of course, I don’t respond to every troll, nor do I respond to every trollish statement of Manju’s. However, if I think it’s worth it, just in case someone else comes by to read and might be interested in the principles and reasoning behind my disagreement, I take the time to write it out.

    The second reason is just that sometimes I like to use responses like that to further clarify my own thinking on the subject. Every now and then (although not with that particular response of mine), in responding to a troll I learn something I didn’t know before or clarify something further that I already knew.

    Plus, that response of mine really didn’t take all that long, since the bulk of it was mostly cut and paste.

15. RE: MANJU abv.
    Good job Neo, I was going to say a bit about Manju being his usual self and equivocating the possible charges against Hillary. You, Neo did it so much better. I did Top Secret Crypto stuff for four years in the Army when we were told that 10 & 10 was the punishment, $10K and ten years in Leavenworth if we ever breathed a little bit of what we did even to our spouses. Hillary was loose and sloppy with Secret Info and got caught and she walked away, end of story.

    Thank you.

16. “Lynch refused to recuse herself but said that she would abide by the FBI’s decision.

    And then, apparently, the DOJ told the FBI what to do.” – Neo

    Standard operating procedure.
    And why didn’t we know about this sooner?
    Some of my family were going around saying Hillary had to be innocent (like, totally) because she hadn’t been indicted for anything. Granted, in 2016, we didn’t know the extent of the corruption in the FBI/DOJ, but Comey’s excuse was laughable on the face of it, as Neo and McCarthy averred.

    Props to Rep. Collins, who made these releases & those of Bruce Ohr as well, which can be downloaded if you follow enough links in the news, so I’ll cut to the chase.

    https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/12/lisa-page-transcript/

    https://dougcollins.house.gov/ohr

17. Or, as Kate put it so well:
    Kate on March 13, 2019 at 4:58 pm at 4:58 pm said:
    So, when Comey said, in the summer of 2016, that no prosecutor would take the case, that was literally true. The DOJ had been told not to prosecute.
    * * *
    Except Comey said “no reasonable prosecutor,” which is what made McCarthy spit coffee at his monitor.

18. Lynch, head of the DOJ at the time, is not supposed to tell the FBI what to do—

    If you look at the transcript, on page 95 Radcliffe asks Page who told her what to do about gross negligence. It was not Lynch.

    Just going by the Russia investigation, while Sessions was recused Mueller still had to secure permission from DOJ (and DOJ must provide Congress with a report detailing every “no” that they gave to Mueller).

    DOJ is still the FBI’s boss. The interactions described in the transcript don’t appear to violate the terms of Lynch’s recusal.

19. Wait. I forgot. Lynch did not recuse herself. Either way, the point is moot. Lynch is not the one who told Page what to do.

20. “Gross negligence” is not a constitutionally vague standard.

    I can’t say I have strong opinions here, but this appears to be a reference to Gorin v. US.

    Long, short: this Scotus case concerns Section 793 of the Espionage Act…the very statute Clinton was accused of violating.

    The defendant argued that the phrase “relating to the national defense” was constitutionally vague. The majority disagreed…but only because they read the law to require intent.

    McCarthy appears to be wrong. See here;

    Without the requirement of intent, the phrase “relating to the national defense” would be unconstitutionally vague. This reading of the statute has guided federal prosecutors ever since, which is why Comey based his decision not to file charges on Clinton’s lack of intent. This is also why no one has ever been convicted of violating 793(f) on a gross negligence theory.

21. Manju:

    Gorin is irrelevant to the main topics being discussed here.

    I wonder sometimes whether you have compromised reading comprehension, or whether your inability to understand an argument is feigned. But whichever it is, as I explained in a comment at 8:19 PM, I’m addressing these explanations to a much larger audience than you.

    The main points here are that it’s not for the FBI to judge whether Hillary can be convicted and whether the DOJ should bring charges. That’s for the DOJ to decide. And Gorin is so ambiguous and there is so much argument over what it means and whether and how it would apply here (see this lengthy discussion, for example), that it is absurd to say that intent was absolutely necessary for her to be prosecuted. That’s for a prosecutor and then a court to decide.

    But as I already said, the intent or no intent question is irrelevant to many of the points being made here. There are many other problems with what happened, in particular the roles of the FBI vs. the roles of the DOJ, and how the two agencies interact in terms of those roles. The main other problem has to do with the definition of another term, gross negligence, and whether that applied. Another issue has to do with whether the DOJ is empowered to decide that a statute that has never been found to be unconstitutional is in fact unconstitutional; it is not empowered to do so.

    In addition, that last sentence that you quoted from that article on Gorin cited that case as the reason that: “…no one has ever been convicted of violating 793(f) on a gross negligence theory.”

    However:

    The Supreme Court case Gorin v. United States (1941), which involved the Espionage Act and its use against Soviet Intelligence Agent Mihail Gorin, examined statute 18 US 793(a) of the Espionage Act.

    That’s a different part of the Act. Hillary Clinton was being investigated for violations of several statutes. One was 18 USC 1924, which reads:

    Whoever being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.

    Gorin isn’t relevant to that one. And the Time article that mentions that statu

22. Gross negligence indeed. And what is exceedingly troublesome and I never hear anyone talk about anymore is that the FBI found that Obama e-mailed Hillary on her server under an alias, which tells me two things. One he is guilty of perjury since disavowed to the FBI any knowledge of her private server and two that his knowledge of it would seem to implicate him for gross negligence as well. They both knew what they were doing. But of course among the crooked doings of these two, an e-mail scandal is small potatoes.

23. Manju:

    One more thing—some people have been convicted of violating 793(f) on a gross negligence theory.

    See this:

    Section 793(f) of the Espionage Act is unique in that it punishes the loss or removal of national defense information resulting from “gross negligence.” This standard has been described in other contexts as “the failure to exercise even a slight degree of care.” Prosecutions under the gross negligence provision of 18 U.S.C. Section 793(f) appear to be rare, but at least two service members were convicted under this provision, as applied through the UMCJ, for removing classified materials from a government workplace and failing to report or return the material upon discovering it had been removed.

    Although there have been at least three charges under 18 U.S.C. §793(f) for unlawful transmission or retention of national defense information since January 1, 2000, CRS was able to identify only one charge under the gross negligence provision of this section. That charge was made against former FBI Agent James Smith, who was suspected of supplying classified information to a Chinese national over the course of a 20-year period. See Indictment, United States v. Smith, No. CR-03-4290M (C.D. Cal. May 7, 2003); Vincent J. Schodolski, Ex-FBI Agent Indicted in China Spy Case, Chi. Tribune (May 8, 2003), Ex-FBI agent indicted in China spy case. Smith ultimately pled guilty to the lesser charge of making false statements under 18 U.S.C. §1001.

24. It’s all Who Whom now and has been for a while already.

    The implications of this are horrific and therefore many strive assiduously to keep their eyes averted and grasp onto whatever tattered bits of the old Civic Religion they can.

    The time now is Ten Past Salazar. Me? I’d put my long-term money on whoever commands The Army in Africa 🙂

25. One more thing—some people have been convicted of violating 793(f) on a gross negligence theory.

    I think the key phrase here is “as applied through the UMCJ”. The former military prosecutor to whom I linked to above mentions this, although he characterizes criminal charges brought under the Uniform Code of Military Justice in military court as “not under 793(f).”

    Whether or not its accurate to say those who are convicted under UMCJ violated 793(f) I haven’t slightest. But suffice to say; “these rules do not apply to any civilian personnel at the State Department and can only be applied to DoD civilians in very limited circumstances.”

    So there have been zero civilian convictions of violating 793(f) on a gross negligence theory.

26. Gorin is irrelevant to the main topics being discussed here.

    Your first point in reply to me was that;

    “Gross negligence” is not a constitutionally vague standard. Any lawyer who says that is either lying or ignorant, and the lawyers of the DOJ are not ignorant.

    In Gorin, the majority said that the phrase “relating to the national defense” would be unconstitutionally vague without a finding of intent.

    So that’s what the DOJ lawyers probably meant.

27. “Lynch is not the one who told Page what to do.”

    But someone DID tell Comey. Who might that have been?

    And someone DID tell Page. Once again, who?

    The entire immaculate deception, from Obama-to-DOJ-to-FBI-to-FBI agents; from H. Clinton-to-Fusion GPS-to-Perkins Coie-to-Steele-to-Brennan-to-DOJ-to-FBI was shrouded meticulously in extraordinary degrees of separation.

    Degrees of separation that, themselves, had to be hidden (and lied about) AT ALL COSTS.

    (Hidden? Lied about? Hmmm. now just why might that be?….)

    There are two major reasons:
    1. To cover up the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up (ad nauseum)
    2. To facilitate accusing ANYONE who might dare to try to untangle and unravel—to understand and figure out—this vast criminal conspiracy of being a crazed Trump-supporting conspiracy monger. (After all, how absolutely bat-s*** crazy does one have to be to accuse THE MOST TRANSPARENT, “SCANDAL-FREE” ADMINISTRATION in the history of the Republic of such an absurd, ridiculous, laughable, nutso conspiracy? To which the answer is, obviously: off-the-charts, certifiably INSANE, that’s how…. with the MSM riding shotgun for Obama, Clinton, et al., demonizing Trump and inventing all kinds of slanders and bizarre innuendo—firmly and widely believed by the usual suspects—against him and his supporters.)

    To be sure, now that Trump has been so widely and effectively demonized, discredited and essentially tarred and feathered, the general consensus—should this thing ever see the light of day—might well be that the Democrats were absolutely justified in this gross subversion of the Laws of the nation….

    …Which, of course, is part and parcel of the plan (and why the MSM cannot avoid being seen as a co-conspirator)—and the Great Hope of the miscreants….

    Yes, hope does spring eternal….

28. The main points here are that it’s not for the FBI to judge whether Hillary can be convicted and whether the DOJ should bring charges.

    Well, you just cited Lisa Page saying that DOJ did just that.

    it is absurd to say that intent was absolutely necessary for her to be prosecuted. That’s for a prosecutor and then a court to decide.

    Page’s testified that the FBI was a “maybe” on the question and “had multiple conversations with the Justice Department about bringing a gross negligence charge”.

    After some deliberation, it appears DOJ made the “constitutionally vague” call, which probably refers to Gorin (though that’s speculation on my part). Be that has it may, Page’s testimony aligns with the idea that the prosecutors made the call.

    So one wonders what you find so suspicious about her testimony.

29. When Bill Clinton met Loretta Lynch on the tarmac and told her how likely it was that she would be the first black woman on the Supreme Court, the fix was in.

    When we see that the FBI went after the cop who leaked the meeting it is obvious how rotten the agency has become. Wray is incapable of reforming it. Something totally different must replace it.

30. All of the arcane arguments from the left about why HRC didn’t do anything criminal make little sense to normal people. I know someone closely related to me who has security clearances. Possibly her work is not as sensitive as OldTexan’s was, but she knows that if she put some of the information she has on Gmail, or talked about it at family dinners, she’d be off to prison promptly, even if she weren’t in touch with Chinese agents.

    The leftist argument is that HRC, Lynch, Obama, & Co., are just more special than we are, and can do what they want without penalty and without considering the national interest.

31. When we see that the FBI went after the cop who leaked the meeting it is obvious how rotten the agency has become.

    The Thin Blue line is to keep the civilians in line by seeing them as criminals but also keeping cops in line with Obedience to Union bosses on pain of being ostracized, killed, threatened, or suppressed by their fellow “Blue”. Works great so far.

32. “If he [Comey] was worried that Attorney General Loretta Lynch was conflicted, the upright move was to advise her to step aside — and to do it not at the end but at an earlier point, when it might have helped the FBI get out from under the irregular constraints her Justice Department was imposing on investigators. And a prosecutor’s conflict is not a basis for the FBI to appropriate her authority — Lynch had a deputy and other subordinates who could have acted as attorney general if her recusal was warranted.”

    This is from Andrew McCarthy’s column. The problem is that last sentence: Lynch’s deputy and other subordinates were, in fact, as conflicted and compromised as Lynch.

    But the bottom line is, “everyone knew” Hillary would win the election and this whole matter would just go quietly away.

33. Manju:

    The statute does not only relate to the military. It’s been prosecuted that way because that’s where the situation has tended to arise. But it relates to anyone at all—and there has never been any judicial ruling that says otherwise, nor is the statute written to restrict it in any way to the military. It is all prosecutorial discretion—and the DOJ are the potential prosecutors here.

    Of course, the DOJ can choose to prosecute someone or not prosecute someone, but this particular “someone” was this particular DOJ’s (that is, Obama’s DOJ’s) preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton.

    What’s more, this is hardly the only issue, and that one statute was not the only statute involved.

    Here’s what happened [emphasis mine]:

    An internal chart prepared by federal investigators working on the so-called “Midyear Exam” probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails, exclusively reviewed by Fox News, contained the words “NOTE: DOJ not willing to charge this” next to a key statute on the mishandling of classified information. The notation appeared to contradict former FBI Director James Comey’s repeated claims that his team made its decision that Clinton should not face criminal charges independently.

    Fox News has confirmed the chart served as a critical tip that provided the basis for Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe’s explosive questioning of former FBI lawyer Lisa Page last year, in which Page agreed with Ratcliffe’s characterization that the DOJ had told the FBI that “you’re not going to charge gross negligence.” A transcript of Page’s remarks was published Tuesday as part of a major document release by the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins.

    The document, entitled “Espionage Act Charges – Retention/Mishandling,” contained a list of several criminal statutes related to the mishandling of classified information, as well as a list of all the elements that prosecutors would need to prove in order to successfully prosecute a case.

    Among the statutes listed are 18 U.S.C. 793(d), which covers the “willfull” retention of national defense information that could harm the U.S.; 18 U.S.C. 793(f), which pertains to “gross negligence” in the handling of classified information by permitting the information to be “removed from its proper place of custody”; and 18 U.S.C. 1924, listed as a misdemeanor related to retaining classified materials at an “unauthorized location.”

    Listed directly below to the elements of 18 U.S.C. 793(f) were the words: “NOTE: DOJ not willing to charge this; only known cases are Military, cases when accused lost the information (e.g. thumb drive sent to unknown recipient at wrong address.)”

    None of the other descriptions of the statutes had a similar notation.

    Much more here from McCarthy about the myriad irregularities in the handling of the FBI’s investigation of the email scandal.

34. A different, question-raising angle on the “Lynch connection” to the so-called “investigation” on alleged Russian collusion, along with another question that may never be answered:
    https://saraacarter.com/lynch-testimony-reveals-bias-and-intent-for-failing-to-give-trump-defensive-briefing/

35. If you’re finding it hard to bushwack through the maze—and timeline—of deception, the twitter feed of “John ‘Undercover’ Huber” might help:
    https://twitter.com/JohnWHuber

    (H/T Lee Smith)

36. When is “shocking” no longer “shocking?:

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/peter-strzok-clinton-doj-struck-deal-that-blocked-fbi-access-to-clinton-foundation-emails-on-her-private-server

    H/T Instapundit

37. Manju’s wrong again. Intent to harm the US is not required under 18 USC 793(d), (e), and (f), Sec. 798(a)(4), Sec. 1924, and Sec. 2071. The mens rea is the willful doing of the act of transmitting, withholding, or destroying the information, not the intent to harm the US. Of course, they couldn’t prosecute Hillary under 2071, since one of the punishments is to forfeit her public office and her right to ever hold public office again.

    Manju, would you please read the statutes before commenting on them?

38. TommyJay — one of the best and most little noticed things Trump has done was to pardon that sailor. (He was an EM, BTW, not an officer.)

39. The statute does not only relate to the military.

    I’m guessing you’re replying to this quote: “these rules do not apply to any civilian personnel at the State Department and can only be applied to DoD civilians in very limited circumstances.”

    “These rules” refers to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, not the Espionage Act.

40. But it relates to anyone at all—and there has never been any judicial ruling that says otherwise, nor is the statute written to restrict it in any way to the military.

    Right. But in Gorin, Scotus ruled that when applied to civilians ”intent” must be shown…because without it part of the law is unconstitutionally vague.

    but this particular “someone” was this particular DOJ’s (that is, Obama’s DOJ’s) preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton.

    Right. It’s good to be suspicious of power. Now all you have to do is gather evidence of obstruction.

    Did Obama call Comey into the office and ask him to let the Clinton investigation go? Did he fire Comey with the Clinton investigation on his mind? Did he ask Comey for his loyalty. Has he publicly asked for his Attorney General to be more like Roy Cohn. Has he publicly rebuked his Attorney General for bringing charges against Democratic Representatives during an election year?

41. Manju is asking all the “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions again.

    Are BHO’s unicorn farts methane-free and do those magical unicorn skittles cure cancer?

    And yet Manju still hasn’t been interviewed by the DOJ. /s

42. Kate on March 14, 2019 at 8:24 am at 8:24 am said:
    All of the arcane arguments from the left about why HRC didn’t do anything criminal make little sense to normal people.

    * * *
    Nice to get so many legal questions out on the board, but Kate cuts to the chase, which explains why public trust in all government institutions including the courts is so low: if the laws have not been written in such a manner as to be clear and uniform, then they need to be rewritten & clarified, not continually “interpreted” by the courts, and executive agencies, to the point that they turn the original statute on its head.

    But a little srategic ambiguity is often a feature, not a bug, isn’t it?

43. Barry Meislin on March 14, 2019 at 1:11 pm at 1:11 pm said:
    When is “shocking” no longer “shocking?:

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/peter-strzok-clinton-doj-struck-deal-that-blocked-fbi-access-to-clinton-foundation-emails-on-her-private-server
    * * *
    Kind of proves Kate’s point: what rational person outside of the government swamp would limit FBI examination of the computers of a person who was, at that time, KNOWN to have classified information on those computers?

    Status-privilege is alive and well in the People’s Republic.

44. NEITHER “gross negligence” nor “intent” are necessary to have violated classified information laws. EVERYONE who has a security clearance knows how to properly handle it and safeguard it. The mere act of mishandling it is a crime, and I know of many people who have been prosecuted and convicted for it.

    Of course, Hillary did intend to ignore (Highly) classified info regs when she set up her homebrew server and when she instructed her staff to cut of headers and footers and fax her classified docs over unsecured fax machines.

    The real reason the DOJ/FBI did a fake investigation is because if they had followed procedures and laws, as the plentiful evidence shows, they would have had to charge, prosecute, try and convict HIllary and she would have had to drop out of the presidential race and the Dems would have been without a candidate.

45. DOJ/FBI kept citing the Espionage Act because it had the gross negligence language and intent, because the standard mishandling classified information law (I don’t have the citation) doesn’t have those provisions. This is a classic exercise in mis-direction “Oh, we can’t prosecute her on this law” while ignoring plenty of evidence under the other more relevant law.

46. and the Dems would have been without a candidate.

    I think the concatenation of state laws would have allowed the DNC to substitute a candidate. See the replacement of Thos. Eagleton on the Democratic ticket in 1972 or the Checkers speech, wherein Nixon admonished the audience to wire or write the Republican National Committee as to whether or not he should be replaced. Had the indictment occurred prior to the convention, the delegates could have substituted someone. Unless an indictment was issued past the point where amended printed ballots could be ordered, they’d have a candidate.

47. Did Obama call Comey into the office and ask him to let the Clinton investigation go?

    No, Obama’d use intermediaries. As is, the recruitment and promotion standards in place in the relevant agencies were such during the Obama regime that they serve the interests of the Democratic Party without being asked. See Lois Lerner.

48. Art Deco on March 15, 2019 at 5:44 pm at 5:44 pm said:
    Did Obama call Comey into the office and ask him to let the Clinton investigation go?

    No, Obama’d use intermediaries.
    * * *
    “Will no one rid me of this troublesome Republican?”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F

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